Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology has been under steady development for some time, and as a result various MEMS devices (e.g., accelerometers for measuring linear acceleration and gyroscopes for measuring angular velocity) have been implemented within several applications. For example, individual accelerometer and gyroscope sensors are currently being used in vehicle air bag controls, gaming consoles, digital cameras, video cameras, and mobile phones.
MEMS devices typically generate one or more analog output signals that correspond to a given measurement and, therefore, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is usually required to convert the analog output signals into corresponding digital signals for digital signal processing. Conventional applications that include a MEMS device and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), typically implement multi-chip board level technology to couple the MEMS device to the analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and/or implement the MEMS device and the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) on separate chips, printed circuit boards (PCBs), or modules. Such usage of board level assembly technology to couple a MEMS device to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and implementation of a MEMS device on a separate chip or printed circuit board, however, requires lots of space, more power, and higher cost, which generally limits the number of applications into which MEMS devices can be utilized.